Is participating in social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook just a “phase” that people seem to go through? A new video by user “Super Josh” on Current.com claims just that. In his satirical animated short “Networking Wars,” cartoon representatives of MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, and Second Life vie for the attention of an average user. Very funny, and perhaps, very true.

Sometimes, running a brand new, top-of-the-line operating system isn’t possible. Systems made to run Windows 2000, for example, will not be able to properly support Firefox 3.0, as one of our commenters has already figured out. But fear not. Don’t let those old legacy systems die in the basement. Get WattOS instead. Based on Ubuntu Linux, WattOS is designed to get the best out of older, more “time tested” machines. It can do almost anything that its bigger brother can do, just in a smaller package. WattOS is completely free to use and is covered under the GNU public license.

Moving to the world of telecommunication devices for a moment, there’s TokBox. Powered by Adobe’s innovative “Air” development platform, TokBox is a Skype-esque way to keep in touch with family and friends. TokBox can be used from a variety of diverse places, from their website to Facebook. While the little upstart might not have the features of Skype at the moment, it is definitely one program to keep your eye on.

Those who own an iPhone are no doubt familiar with Apple’s MobileMe, a handy little service that syncs up all of your media devices. If you like the idea of everything working together, but don’t think that perfect harmony is worth $100, give Mail2Web LIVE a try. Mail2Web does everything that MobileMe does, from playing nice with your Blackberry to updating Outlook on your PC, only it’s free. And the kicker? The service is built upon Microsoft’s Hosted Exchange Platform. So give Mail2Web LIVE a try. We promise not to tell Steve Jobs.

These days, staying mobile doesn’t mean that you have to leave your social networking habits at home. For example, check out Moblog. It works kind of like Twitter, except it allows you to post pictures and video you’ve taken with your phone as well as text. And the best part? The Moblog team builds your private space for you. All you need to do is send a text message. Moblog makes networking on the road simple and easy.

Ah… the homemade “tribute” music video. What better way to show your love for a celebrity, professional wrestler, or animated series from Japan than to commit low-level copyright infringement in their name? If this is a racket that you want to get in on but believe that your video editing skill are lacking, check out Animoto. Simply upload some images, upload a song of your choice, and Animoto does the rest. The results are surprisingly good.

Say that you’ve graduated past the random “still” image. Maybe you want to incorporate actual video into your tribute or business video. Don’t worry, because MuveeMix has it all covered. MuveeMix takes in your music, throws in some video of your choice, and then edits it on the fly. The result? A professional quality music video. As always, MuveeMix is completely free of charge.

Some of us, however, might not be as content letting a website do the work for them. For all you control freaks hands-on types, there’s JumpCut, from Yahoo. JumpCut is like a web-based iMovie, allowing you to edit, splice, overlay, and more, all from your browser. One of the coolest features is that you can import media directly from your Facebook page or your Flikr account. You also get a special email address, that your friends can use to send you clips from their mobile phones. All you need is a Yahoo ID (those are free as well) and a video camera.

If you want more out of a video editor than what JumpCut can provide, but at the same time not willing to take out the small bank loan it takes to afford Apple’s Final Cut Pro, then EyeSpot might be for you. It’s not as powerful as Final Cut Pro, but it has more bells and whistles than JumpCut. And for an added feature, it even allows you to embed the video editor into your website, allowing other people to come in and mix up and edit videos that you put on your website. A 100 MB upload limit doesn’t get you very far with video content, though. Hopefully, they’ll up this limit soon. If not, someone will. There’s no stopping the Free Line.

And now for the big one. Are you ready for this? Your not…there’s no way. What we’re about to show you is going to change the very meaning of online video. Kaltura is a…wait for it… a free and open source VIDEO PLATFORM! Well, what does that mean, you ask? I thought you might. It means that now anybody can add a full featured video solution to their website for free! Functionality includes uploading, transcoding, remixing, annotating, sharing, search, and just about anything else you can think of. A plugin has just been released that let’s you add Kaltura video to a wiki and a WordPress plugin is coming soon. Keep your eye on our own Free Line wiki. We’ll be implementing this very soon. Its just too cool.

Google has always been a fan of pranks, ones that usually only uber geeks think are funny. But today, we have a link to the top 17 hidden gems and jokes that Google has scattered across the web — and I’m sure anyone will enjoy these.

Mozilla announced that FireFox 3 is finally ready for public consumption. Until now they have cautioned users to stay away from FireFox 3’s beta, claiming that it was not ready for use and to wait until June for the official, final release. Now, they’re telling us the latest FireFox is ready to use — stable, fast and free of memory leaks.

Ebay has layed off 125 of its workers in both the US and Europe during its massive reorganization, in a move to centralize customer support and other administrative functions. Still going strong, the auction giant plans on hiring more workers within the next year.

And last but not least, Apple Insider says that Apple is finally in talks with music companies over their own music subscription service. Until, Steve Jobs, who sells music on iTunes, has dissed the idea as only “renting music” but now the Nokia/Universal deal (called “Comes with Music“) — allows Nokia cell phone users to download as much Universal’s library as they want – and keep it at the end of the period. Currently Real Music and Napster are the only providers with subscription services – after Yahoo Music dropped its subscriptions earlier this year. Now, it looks like Apple may be next to offer all-you-can-eat music for a flat monthly rate. That’s big news – and by the way, if you’re on iTunes check out the Free Line Report podcast. It’s in the Business section, under Management and Marketing.

**中文版视频:

你知道，Google可是个恶作剧的行家，比如那些复活节彩蛋，和那些隐藏在各个程序中的小秘密——很多玩家都觉得非常有趣。今天，我们找到了17个Google隐藏在网络上的宝物和玩笑。一定要看一下！

Mozilla宣布火狐3浏览器终于可以供大家使用了。以前他们总是警告用户不要使用火狐3测试版，声明说现在还不成熟请耐心等待今年六月份的最终版。现在，他们告诉我们最新版本的火狐可以使用了，稳定，迅速而且无内存泄露。

Ebay刚刚因为结构重组在美国和欧洲解雇了125名员工，此举是为了加强客户服务和其它管理功能。 这个还在持续增长的拍卖巨人计划在明年招入更多的员工。

最后，苹果的内部人士说它们终于和音乐公司展开了关于它们自己的音乐订阅服务的对话。其实，Steve Jobs，这个通过iTunes卖音乐的人，最初只是冒出了“出租音乐”的想法，现在却做成了诺基亚/环球的这项服务（叫做随音乐而来）－－它允许诺基亚的手机用户随意下载环球公司发行的音乐，直到订阅期截止。目前Real Music和Napster是唯一两家提供音乐订阅的公司，而雅虎在去年早期放弃了类似的业务。现在，看起来苹果将成为下一个月租无限量下载音乐的服务商。这可是大新闻，顺便说一句，如果使用iTunes的别忘了关注Free Line Report的广播节目。

Facebook has started testing its own instant messaging, causing concern with other third party applications that already provide this functionality. Like GTalk, this will be built on the Jabber platform, and will also work right in the web browser, letting users chat with their friends directly from their profile.

Looks like the new iPhone SDK won’t be as easy to get a hold of as originally announced. Many developers, from professional to hobbyist alike, got rejection letters from Apple this week saying that they would not be getting the much desired iPhone SDK. So far very few people have reported acceptance, and so far there seems to be nothing outstanding that separates the accepted from rejected.

Are you a web designer that is in love with Photoshop, but you don’t know how to make it really sing yet? We’ve got a link to a great tutorial site and, for example, a specific lesson that shows you how to make photorealistic reflections with a few simple tools.

Yahoo has joined the next generation of web development – Web 3.0 anyone? — by announcing support for numerous semantic web formats. Included are RDF and microformats which make it easier to share personal data and calendars online across multiple formats. Expect a flurry of websites updating to support these formats, so that they can keep bringing in traffic from Yahoo’s search results.

“Visualization” is all about hot new technologies that turns complex information into something understandable, with different visual graphs. We’ve got a link to the best tools for visualization, including free programs that can parse complex data very easily and give you cool graphical results fast. It includes tools for Digg, Amazon, Last.fm and many others, allowing you to leverage the internet to show your stuff in whole new ways.

**中文版视频

首先，Facebook正在测试自己的即时通讯软件，并引起了其他已经提供这一功能的第三方程序的注意，比如gtalk。它也将被放在Jabber平台上，而且对浏览器聊天支持良好，这样用户就可以在自己的页面上与朋友聊天了。

看起来新的iPhone SDK并不像之前说的那样好拿到。许多编程者，从专业人员到爱好者，本周都收到了苹果的拒绝信表示他们将不会得到期待已久的iPhone SDK。目前为止只有很少的申请被通过，而且看起来被通过或拒绝之间也并没有什么本质的区别。

你是一个非常喜欢Photoshop的网页设计师，却不知道如何让它听你话吗？我们发现了一个很好的教学网站，上面有些很好的例子，比如有特定的一课教你如何在几步之内学会制作实物反射效果。

Yahoo已经开始了下一代网站的发展，有人想说Web3.0吗？其实是宣布支持很多语义网络格式。包括RDF和微格式，他们可以使跨平台分享个人信息和日程表变得更加容易。希望很快能有更多的网站能够支持这些格式，以便从雅虎的搜索结果中带去更多的流量。

视觉化是指用新的技术和不同的图表，把复杂的信息变得简单易懂。今天我们给大家一些视觉化最好的工具，包括一些可以快速分析复杂数据并生成超酷图表的免费工具。其中有为Digg，亚马逊，Last.fm等等设计的工具，让你可以用全新的方式展示你自己。

Facebook has opened up their friend feed service, so that users can put in feeds from any of their social networks. Not content with other companies to support its now open friend feed platform, Facebook has taken the initiative and lets you pull in information from other platforms. Now you only need to log in to Facebook to see what all your friends are up to.

Got an old laptop lying around collecting dust? Why not bring it back to life and make it useful again! We’ve got a link to several free and low-cost projects that can turn your old laptop into a webserver, photo frame, LCD monitor or wireless network extender.

Google’s moving into the healthcare business by storing medical records online for doctors and hospitals. Their test environment will be in Cleveland, and all patients must approve these records to go live in the new search environment. These records will be password protected, and available to healthcare professionals only.

XineDesktop, a web based desktop platform, has changed it’s name to CloudO. CloudO is a web based desktop that is nice to look at and has tons of functionality, but is always in prebeta stage. Maybe the name change is a good sign, and we can see an actual product to play around with before the year is out.

Apple’s second version of Apple TV makes some massive improvements over the old, clunky, poor selling model. With the new version of Apple TV you can connect directly to your iTunes, and the shows you purchase now look crisp and clear. With news of Netflix creating their own set top box to do the same thing, it seems that the next computer battlefield will be the living room. When will Microsoft join in the fray? It seems very soon- since Netflix will also work with any Xbox 360 system.

eBay CEO, Meg Whitman, is rumored to be retiring after ten years as CEO. According to the Wall Street Journal, the departure could happen within the next few weeks. Meg, joined the company six months before it went public when they had 30 employees; today, they have 15,000.

Time Warner is planning to put caps on the amount of bandwidth people get when using their high speed internet. Users that exceed the limit will be charged for every megabyte above the threshold.

Venture Capital investments set a new six year high with an 11% increase over last year, a total of $29.4 billion in VC funding for new businesses.

Apple has projected a net profit of $1.58 billion for the first quarter of 2008, an increase of more than 30% over the first quarter of ‘07. Steve Jobs says the increase comes from starting the year with a strong new product line, including the Macbook Air, Mac Pro and, iTunes Movie Rentals.

Frank Kern’s free videos are REALLY moving the free line. Frank Kern is the copywriter behind three of the top four internet marketing launches of all time, including StomperNet , which sold more than $12 million in 12 hours.

In this free video series, Frank shows exactly how he built his own niche email list to more than 400,000, plus he explains many of his high level strategies for online persuasion — which he calls Mass Control. His ideas have been responsible for almost 30 million in sales.

Plus, you can watch his whistleblower video to get a glimpse “behind the scenes” at some of these huge product launches. And I can tell you in advance — the stories are true. Click here to learn from a real master of online marketing — for free.